There’s a lot of concern about being able to pick up on your partners intentions and moods so to be on the same page as them. However, I am doubtful that without the specificity of language we can ask a partner to know the exact mood we are feeling. Also, I feel it may be ridiculous for even the most empathic of a person to have the same emotional state as their partner without coming to the dance from the same circumstances. A fantastic teacher not long ago pointed out that it’s really very selfish to force our expectation of an emotional state onto our partners.

It makes little sense to be ecstatic while your partner is holding back tears. However if we could range emotions from positive to negative and from intense to mellow you might have things like grumpy and surly or thrilled and delirious clumping together in ways that we can match up for a dance. Even better when the song sets one of the parameters. How often though do we ignore the parameters set by the song. How difficult can it be to come off of a dance that was intense and try to contort yourself to a new emotion? I’ve been known to sit out a song or two for exactly that reason.